One year ago, on October 10, 1995- within hours of containment
of the massive Mount Vision fire - PRBO biologists donned bright yellow
fire suits and hard hats and paid our first post-fire visit to the once
lush riparian valleys of Point Reyes National Seashore.

In fly-overs at an altitude of 1000 feet, fire assessment team members
had reported that most riparian areas in the burn appeared relatively unscathed.
Our on-the-ground visits were some of the first to relay that the understory,
the most important habitat for breeding songbirds, was devastated: many
stretches in Muddy Hollow and Coast Camp were over 90% burned.

The promise of regeneration, however, was present in the form of small
patches of riparian habitat that had miraculously escaped the flames. Because
the wind-fanned flames had moved extremely rapidly, burning some 9000 acres
in just 24 hours on the second day of the fire, they burned different areas
at different intensities. This left a mosaic on the land that included
some relatively small unburned riparian patches. During the blaze, these
had acted as refugia for numerous creatures, especially mobile ones like
songbirds.

In the weeks immediately after the fire, these patches were literally inundated
with birds. Birds of all types persisted in them: Wrentits and White-crowned
Sparrows from the coastal scrub; nuthatches and woodpeckers from the bishop
pine forests; and even yellowthroats and Marsh Wrens from nearby burned
marshes. Our data from bird censuses and regular mist-netting backed up
our first impressions: the abundance and diversity of birds in these riparian
patches in the months following the fire were higher than in nearby watersheds
outside the burn area.

A general consensus among ornithologists, though, was that the fire's real
impact would occur this spring, when the breeding season began. During
the nesting cycle, selective pressures exert a powerful force on most landbirds.
For species that build open-cup nests, the average rate of nest success
across North America is only 42%. When birds attempt nesting in degraded
or disturbed habitats, their success drops to less than 20%: fewer than
two out of ten nests attempted will fledge young, and this is too low a
success rate to maintain a stable population.

A Wilson's Warbler feeds young in its nest on the Point Reyes
National Seashore.